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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Model-Driven Architecture?

@greblhad suggests building Lego models as a technique for enterprise architecture: "If your #entarch can not be illustrated in 3D using LEGO then you have a problem".

The reason Lego cannot reliably express architecture is because just looking at the model doesn't tell us which elements are architecturally significant. For example, if a particular Lego model has a row of small bricks over the window instead of larger ones, and uses green bricks for the base, how can we know whether the architect actually specified this detail, or whether the architect left these details unspecified and the person building the model simply used the bricks that were available? In other words, the same physical model could have been produced by two different architectures: one including the instruction "Use small bricks over the window and green bricks for the base", and one including the instruction "Don't buy more bricks if you don't have to". (The latter being derived from one of the popular architectural principles that supposedly drive architectural practice.) Note that in this example, the two possible instructions are at two different logical levels, and the illustration may mislead us about the architect's real intentions. For a different example, see my post What if architects designed our communities?

At its best, LEGO (even with people figures, as suggested by @tetradian) shows a momentary instantiation of an architecture, and is therefore at the wrong level of abstraction.

I accept that we are not talking about using Lego models as a specification tool. But illustration only works if you know what is being illustrated, as Wittgenstein pointed out (Philosophical Investigations). Furthermore, the representational nature of the model may be problematic. If Lego only has a limited palette of colours, do we interpret green to mean any shade of green, or that particular shade? Does the use of green bricks in the model indicate the use of green bricks in the planned structure, or does it have some other meaning, for example indicating the need for specially treated bricks? And so on.

@greblhad was inspired by LEGO's new "product", called LEGO® Serious Play®. Perhaps enterprise architecture needs creative play as well as rigorous specification, but it would be surprising if the same tools and methods supported both.